Fire!
Something caught fire in an apartment a block over from our house about half an hour ago. Almost a dozen fire brigade and police vehicles were in place literally minutes after the smoke began to billow, but from what I can gather the fire was extinguished pretty quickly and no one was hurt.
A few years ago the house next door to ours burned down (no one was hurt then either, thank heavens). It was nothing short of a miracle that our house was saved with nothing more than minor heat damage of the paint on the gutters (well, our garden was pretty much destroyed because the firemen had to break into our yard to gain access to the side and rear of the burning house. But gardens grow back; houses don’t).
The response time of Japanese fire brigades is simply amazing. Fire has always been one of the great fears of Tokyo-ites, and for very good reason. The sheer density of the buildings and the number of old wooden structures (like ours) mean that once a fire gets going, it can be extremely difficult to contain. Once again, three cheers for firefighters.
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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2004.07.19 (Mon) • 11:44
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